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IN 

ALEXANDER  GOLDSTEIN 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

AN   ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  BEFORE 

R.  E.  LEE  CAMP,  No.  1 
CONFEDERATE  VETERANS 

AT  ,         ,;',    ;       ;  >  '. ' .'  '  ',  }  i:'  ;  \  ; 

RICHMOND,  VA.,  OCTOBER  29,  1909 

BY 

Hon.  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN 


Published  by  Order  of  the  Camp 


SECOND  EDITION 


L.  H,  JENKINS,  Publisher 
Richmond,  Va, 


tf57 


v\ 


Abraham  Lincoln 


An  address  delivered  before  R.  E.  Lee  Camp,  No.  1,  on  October  29,  1909, 
by  Hon.  George  L.  Christian,  and  published  by  order  of  the  Camp. 


"Out  of  the  old  fieldes, 
Cometh  al  this  new  corne." — Chaucer. 


COMRADES  OF  LEE  CAMP,  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN  : 

By  a  resolution  adopted  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  Ihis  'Camp,  I  have 
been  asked  to  deliver  an  address  on  the  life  and  character  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  late  President  of  the  United  States.  Believing  the  request  a 
reasonable  one  to  be  preferred  by  the  Camp  and  that  such  a  request  from 
the  Camp  to  one  of  its  members  is  equivalent  to  a  command,  I  have,  with 
some  hesitation,  and  with  greater  distrust  of  my  ability  to  meet  the 
expectations  of  the  Camp,  undertaken  the  fulfilment  of  the  uncongenial 
and  perhaps  unprofitable  task  thus  imposed  upon  me.  I  wish  to  state 
in  the  outset  that  what  I  shall  say  on  this  occasion  will  be  said  in  no 
spirit  of  carping  criticism,  with  no  desire  to  do  injustice  to  my  remarkable 
subject,  and  will  be  as  free  from  sectional  prejudice  and  passion  as  one 
who  has  suffered  as  I  have,  by  the  conduct  of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  followers, 
can  make  it;  and  I  shall  also  strive  to  say  what  I  do  say  solely  in  the 
interest  of  the  truth  of  history. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth.,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free,"  is  a 
maxim  of  the  Divine  Teacher,  and  it  embodies  a  principle  which  should 
be  the  "guiding  star"  of  every  writer  of  history.  The  truth  about  the 
cause,  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  leaders  in  the  great  conflict  from 
'61  to  '65  is  all  that  we  of  the  South  ask,  or  have  a  right  to  ask,  and  we 
should  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than  the  truth  about  these. 

Whenever  the  good  character  of  a  person  is  put  in  issue,  the  party 
avouching  that  good  character  challenges  the  opposite  side  to  show,  by  all 
legitimate  means,  the  contrary  of  the  fact  thus  put  in  issue.  In  the  war 
between  the  States  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  leaders  on  both  sides 
were  necessarily  involved,  and  especially  was  this  true  of  the  character 
and  conduct  of  the  official  heads  of  the  respective  sides.  Last  year  was 
the  centennial  of  the  birth  of  Jefferson  Davis,  the  civic  leader  and  official 
head  of  the  Southern  Confederacy;  the  South  duly  celebrated  that 
centennial  and  avouched  to  the  world  the  conduct  and  the  character  of 
their  representative  head  and  his  leadership,  and  we  think  every  one  who 
loves  the  memory  of  the  Confederacy,  and  of  our  great  struggle  to  main 
tain  it,  ought  to  feel  gratified  and  satisfied  with  the  result. 

This  year  is  the  centennial  of  the  birth  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
civic  leader  and  official  head  of  the  United  States  during  the  existence 

330349 


of  the  Confederacy,  and  the  North  has,  with  singular  temerity,  as  it 
seems  to  us,  thrust  this  character  and  conduct  before  the  world,  some  of 
them  even  claiming  that  he  was  the  "greatest,  wisest  and  godliest  man 
that  has  appeared  on  the  earth  since  Christ."  (See  Facts  and  False 
hoods,  4.) 

This  being  true,  and  since  some  Southern  writers  have  united  in 

these,  it  seems  to  us,  unmerited  adulations  of  this  man,  no  apology  would 

seem  to  be  necessary  for  enquiring  as  to  the  real  basis  of  the  claims  of 

these  eulogists  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  the  admiration,  veneration  and  alleged 

'greatness  now  attempted  to  be  heaped  upon  him. 

:  -'In  this  discussion  we  would,  if  we  could  do  so  and  speak  the  truth, 
gladly  ..adopt-  the:  Roman  maxim,  to  speak  nothing  but  good  of  the  dead. 
But  iinee  s'<3me. !D/' Mr .:  Lincoln's  nearest  and  dearest  friends  (?)  have 
not  seen  fit,  or  been  able  to  do  this,  surely  a  Southern  writer  should  not 
be  criticized  or  judged  harshly  for  repeating  what  some  of  these  friends, 
who  apparently  knew  him  best  and  loved  him  most,  and  who  tell  us  they 
are  only  telling  what  they  know  to  be  true  of  this  remarkable  man,  have 
to  say  about  him,  his  character  and  his  conduct. 

That  the  career  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
recorded  in  history,  and  that  he  must  have  had  some  element  of  character 
which  made  that  career  possible,  no  one  will  deny.  But  that  he  was  the 
pious  and  exemplary  Christian,  the  great  and  good  man,  "the  prophet, 
priest  and  kind,"  the  "Washington,"  the  "Moses,"  the  "Second  to  Christ," 
now  being  portrayed  to  the  world  by  some  of  his  prejudiced  and  intem 
perate  admirers,  we  unhesitatingly  deny,  and  we  think  it  our  duty,  both 
to  ourselves  and  to  our  children,  to  correct  some  of  the  false  impressions 
attempted  to  be  made  about  this  man's  character  and  career,  let  the 
criticisms  or  consequences  be  what  they  may. 

We  have  no  right  to  do  so,  and  we  do  not  object,  in  the  least,  that 
Mr.  Lincoln  shall  be  put  forward  as  the  representative  man  and  ideal  of 
the  North ;  but  we  do  object  to,  and  protest  against,  his  being  proclaimed 
to  the  world  as  the  exemplar  and  representative  of  the  South  and  its 
people.  We  proclaim  Washington,  Henry,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Monroe, 
Jefferson  Davis,  Robert  E.  Lee,  "Stonewall"  Jackson,  Joseph  E.  and 
Albert  Sydney  Johnston,  Wade  Hampton,  Jeb  Stuart,  and  such  like  men, 
as  our  heroes  and  ideals  and  as  the  exemplars  for  our  children  and  our 
children's  children. 

BEASONS  FOR  LINCOLN'S  FAME. 

There  are  three  reasons  which  we  think  in  great  measure  account 
for  the  erroneous  conceptions  and  extravagant  portrayals  now  being  made 
of  Mr.  Lincoln,  viz. : 

(1)  The  cause  of  which  he  was  the  official  head  has,  temporarily 
at  least,  been  deemed  a  success. 

(2)  The  manner  of  his  death  was  such  as  to  shock  all  right-thinking 
people  and  to  create  sympathy  in  his  behalf;  for,  like  the  great  Roman 


Germanicus,  it  may  well  be  said,  he  was  most  fortunate  in  the  circum 
stances  of  his  death. 

(3)  He  was  the  first  President  of  the  Republican  party — the  party 
which  has  practically  dominated  this  country  ever  since  Mr.  Lincoln's 
first  election. 

The  acts  and  doings  of  that  party  during  the  time  he  was  its  official 
head,  many  of  which  were  illegal,  unconstitutional,  tyrannical  and  oppres 
sive,  will  be  judged,  to  a  degree  at  least,  by  the  character  and  conduct  of 
the  man  who  held  that  official  position;  and  the  representatives  of  that 
party  have,  therefore,  hesitated  at  nothing  to  try  to  make  it  appear  that 
their  official  leader  was  a  great  and  good  man,  and  that,  therefore,  they 
were  justified  in  following  his  leadership. 

In  the  course  of  this  address  we  shall  say  but  little  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
private  life,  and  shall  refer  to  it  only  to  show  that  much  of  it  was  utterly 
at  variance  with  the  life  of  the  man  now  being  portrayed  to  us ;  and  we 
shall  certainly  not  criticise  his  humble  and  obscure  birth  and  origin,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  we  extol  him  for  being  able  to  rise  so  far  as  he  did  above 
these,  believing,  as  we  do,  with  Pope,  that 

"Honor  and  shame  from  no  condition  rise, 
Act  well  your  part;  there  all  the  honor  lies." 

As  to  the  cause  of  which  he  was  the  official  head  being  successful, 
we  will  only  remark  that  it  was  certainly  successful  in  preventing  the 
establishment  of  the  Southern  Confederacy  within  certain  territorial 
limits;  but  whether  successful  in  any  other  sense,  remains  yet  to  be 
determined.  The  Washington  Post,  of  August  14,  1906,  said: 

"Let  us  be  frank  about  it.  The  day  the  people  of  the  North 
responded  to  Abraham  Lincoln's  call  for  troops  to  coerce  sovereign 
States,  the  Republic  died  and  the  Nation  was  born." 

And  a  Massachusetts  man  has  written  of  the  Confederates  that — 

"Such  character  and  achievement  were  not  all  in  vain;  that 
though  the  Confederacy  fell  as  an  actual  physical  power,  it  lives 
eternally  in  its  just  cause — the  cause  of  constitutional  liberty." 

MANNER  OF  LINCOLN'S  DEATH  AND  THE  MURDER  OP  MRS.  SURRATT. 

As  to  the  manner  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  death,  aside  from  the  abhorrence 
with  which  we  regard  and  denounce  every  form  of  assassination,  we  have 
to  remark:  (1)  That  it  really  exalted  his  name  and  fame  as  nothing 
before  it  happened  had  done,  or,  in  our  opinion,  could  have  done;  and  (2) 
as  dastardly,  as  cowardly  and  cruel  as  that  deed  was,  it  was,  in  our  opinion, 
not  so  dastardly,  cowardly  or  cruel,  and  no  more  criminal  in  the  eye  of 
the  law,  than  the  murder  of  Mrs.  Surratt,  an  innocent  woman,  by  Andrew 
Johnson,  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  Joseph  Holt,  David  Hunter  and  their  wicked 
and  cowardly  associates.  The  act  of  Booth  was  that  of  a  frenzied  fanatic, 
taking  his  life  in  his  own  hands,  and  attempting  to  avenge  his  people's 


wrongs  by  ridding  the  world  of  the  man  he  believed  to  be  the  author  of 
those  wrongs ;  the  act  of  Johnson,  Stanton  and  others  in  murdering  Mrs. 
Surratt  was  the  deliberate  and  criminal  act  of  cruel,  cowardly  men,  perpe 
trated  on  a  helpless,  harmless  and  innocent  woman,  through  instrumen 
talities  and  forms  as  cruel  as  any  that  were  ever  devised  in  the  darkest 
ages  of  the  world,  but  by  methods  and  at  a  time  when  the  perpetrators 
knew  that  their  cowardly  bodies  were  safe  from  all  harm.  (See  DeWitt's 
Assassination  of  Lincoln,  p.  92,  et  seq.)  This  woman  was  tried  and 
convicted  by  a  military  commission,  of  which  General  David  Hunter  was 
the  president.  It  was  pointed  out  to  the  so-called  court,  by  that  great 
lawyer,  Reverdy  Johnson,  that  such  a  tribunal  had  no  jurisdiction  to  try 
the  case,  and  it  was  afterwards  expressedly  so  decided  in  Ex  parte 
Milligan,  4th  Wallace.  But  this  commission  convicted  this  woman,  who 
even  such  a  creature  as  Ben  Butler  said  was  perfectly  innocent,  thereby 
bringing  themselves  within  the  principle  stated  by  Lord  Brougham  in  a 
famous  case,  when  he  said : 

"When  the  laws  can  act,  every  other  mode  of  punishing  sup 
posed  crimes  is  itself  an  enormous  crime." 

EXAGGERATIONS  ABOUT  LINCOLN  AND   APOTHEOSIS  AFTER  HIS    ASSASSINA 
TION. 

In  all  our  reading,  we  know  of  no  man  whose  merits  have  been  so 
exaggerated  and  whose  demerits  have  been  so  minimized  as  have  those 
of  Abraham  Lincoln.  Indeed,  this  course  has  been  so  insistently  and  per 
sistently  pursued  by  some  Northern  writers  that  it  amounts  to  a  patent 
perversion  of  the  truth,  and  a  positive  fraud  on  the  public. 

General  Don  Piatt,  an  officer  in  the  Federal  Army,  a  man  of  character 
and  culture,  says : 

"With  us,  when  a  leader  dies,  all  good  men  go  to  lying  about 
him.  *  *  *  Abraham  Lincoln  has  almost  disappeared  from 
human  knowledge.  I  hear  of  him,  and  I  read  of  him  in  eulogies 
and  biographies,  but  I  fail  to  recognize  the  man  I  knew  in  life." 
(Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  36-7 ;  Men  Who  Saved  the  Union,  p.  28.) 

William  H.  Herndon,  Mr.  Lincoln's  close  friend  and  law  partner 
for  twenty  years,  who,  we  are  informed,  wrote  a  biography  of  him  in  1866, 
which  is  said  to  have  been  bought  up  and  suppressed,  simply  because  it 
told  the  unvarnished  truth,  said : 

"I  deplore  the  many  publications  pretending  to  be  biographies 
of  Lincoln,  which  teemed  from  the  press  so  long  as  there  was  hope 
for  gain.  Out  of  the  mass  of  these  works,  of  only  one  (Holland's) 
is  it  possible  to  speak  with  any  degree  of  respect."  (Facts  and 
Falsehoods,  p.  37;  Lamon's  Preface,  iii.) 

And  Ward  Hill  Lamon,  who  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  close  friend  and  at 


one  time  his  law  partner,,  who  was  especially  selected  by  Mr.  Lincoln  to 
accompany  him  on  his  midnight  journey  to  the  capital  when  he  was  to  be 
inaugurated,,  who  was  appointed  by  him  marshal  of  the  District  of  Colum 
bia,  who  was  probably  his  closest  and  most  confidential  friend  and  adviser 
during  his  whole  official  life,  says  immediately  after  his  assassination, 
"there  was  the  fiercest  rivalry  as  to  who  should  canonize  him  in  the  most 
solemn  words,  who  should  compare  him  to  the  most  sacred  character  in 
all  history.  He  was  prophet,  priest  and  king.  He  was  Washington.  He 
was  Moses.  He  was  likened  to  Christ  the  Eedeemer.  He  was  likened  to 
God.  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  9 ;  Lamon,  312.) 

Again  says  Lamon : 

"Lincoln's  apotheosis  was  not  only  planned  but  executed  by 
men  who  were  unfriendly  to  him  while  he  lived,  and  that  the 
deification  took  place  with  showy  magnificence  some  time  after 
the  great  man's  lips  were  sealed  in  death.  Men  who  had  exhausted 
the  resources  of  their  skill  and  ingenuity  in  venomous  detraction 
of  the  living  Lincoln,  especially  during  the  last  years  of  his  life, 
were  the  first  when  the  assassin's  bullet  had  closed  the  career  of  the 
great-hearted  statesman  to  undertake  the  self-imposed  task  of 
guarding  his  memory — not  as  a  human  being  endowed  with  mighty 
intellect  and  extraordinary  virtues,  but  as  a  god."  (Lamon' s 
Recollections  of  Lincoln,  p.  169.) 

And  again  he  says : 

For  days  and  nights  after  his  assassination  "it  was  considered 
treason  to  be  seen  in  public  with  a  smile  on  the  face.  Men  who 
spoke  evil  of  the  fallen  chief,  or  ventured  a  doubt  concerning  the 
ineffable  purity  and  saintliness  of  his  life,  were  pursued  by  mobs, 
were  beaten  to  death  with  paving  stones,  or  strung  up  by  the  neck 
to  lamp  posts."  (Lamon,  312.) 

We  shall  attempt  to  show  you  that  this  whole  apotheosis  business 
not  only  took  place,  as  Lamon  says,  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  assassination,  and 
because  of  the  manner  of  his  death,  but  why  it  was  begun  then,  and  has 
continued  until  this  day. 

We  have  already  said  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  first  President  of 
the  Eepublican  party.  He  was  the  official  head  of  that  party  through  the 
most  terrible  and  trying  conflict  recorded  in  history.  The  leaders  of  that 
party  were,  and  are  still,  in  need  of  a  real  hero.  They  knew  that  they 
and  their  conduct  would  be  judged  by  the  character  and  conduct  of  their 
official  head.  The  country  was  stunned  and  dazed  by  the  assassination  of 
this  leader — the  first  assassination  of  the  kind  in  its  history.  The  South 
was  prostrate  and  helpless  at  the  feet  of  the  North,  and  its  leaders  charged 
with  complicity  in  that  awful  crime.  That  time,  of  all  others,  afforded  the 
leaders  of  the  Republican  party — always  quick  and  bold  in  action — the 
opportunity  to  deify  this  its  first  President;  and  those  leaders,  with  a 


6 

stroke  of  audacity  and  genius  never  surpassed,  seized  upon  that  oppor 
tunity  and  manufactured  a  false  glamour  with  which  they  have  sur 
rounded  the  name  and  fame  of  their  chosen  head  calculated  to  deceive  the 
"very  elect" ;  and  they  have  so  persisted  in  their  efforts  in  this  direction, 
from  that  day  to  this,  that  the  lapse  of  nearly  half  a  century  has  failed  to 
dispel  the  delusions  manufactured  at  that  time  and  amid  these  surround 
ings  by  these  people.  Mr.  Lincoln  is  credited  with  the  saying : 

"You  can  fool  some  of  the  people  all  the  time ;  you  can  fool 
all  the  people  some  of  the  time,  but  it  is  impossible  to  fool  all  the 
people  all  the  time." 

We  believe  the  time  is  coming,  if  it  is  not  already  here,  when  the 
scales  will  fall  from  the  eyes  of  a  great  many  in  regard  to  the  true  history 
and  character  of  this  chosen  hero  of  the  North. 

CHARACTERISTICS  OF  LINCOLN. 

Of  course,  within  the  limits  of  this  paper,  we  shall  make  no  attempt 
to  do  more  than  to  give  some  glimpses  of  the  true  character,  character 
istics  and  conduct  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  nor  shall  we  attempt  to  follow  his 
biographers  in  their  details  of  the  career  and  conduct  of  this  enigmatical 
man. 

Lamon  says  he  was  "morbid,  moody,  meditative,  thinking  much  of 
himself,  and  the  things  pertaining  to  himself,  regarding  other  men  as 
instruments 'furnished  to  hand  for  the  accomplishment  of  views  which  he 
knew  were  important  to  him,  and  therefore  considered  important  to  the 
public.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a  man  apart  from  the  rest  of  his  kind.  *  *  * 
He  seemed  to  make  boon  companions  of  the  coarsest  men  on  the  list  of 
his  acquaintances — low,  vulgar,  unfortunate  creatures."  *  *  *  "It 
was  said  that  he  had  no  heart — that  is,  no  personal  attachments  warm  and 
strong  enough  to  govern  his  passions.  It  was  seldom  that  he  praised 
anybody,  and  when  he  did,  it  was  not  a  rival  or  an  equal  in  the  struggle  for 
popularity  and  power."  *  *  *  "No  one  knew  better  how  to  damn  with 
faint  praise,  or  to  divide  the  glory  of  another  by  being  the  first  and 
frankest  to  acknowledge  it."— (Lamon,  pp.  480-1.)  *  *  *  "He  did 
nothing  out  of  mere  gratitude,  and  forgot  the  devotion  of  his  warmest 
partizans  as  soon  as  the  occasion  for  their  services  passed." — Id.,  p.  482. 
*  *  *  "Notwithstanding  his  overweening  ambition,  and  the  breathless 
eagerness  with  which  he  pursued  the  objects  of  it,  he  had  not  a  particle  of 
sympathy  with  the  great  mass  of  his  fellow-citizens  who  were  engaged 
in  similar  struggles  for  place." — Id.,  p.  483. 

Now  mark  you,  this  is  what  Lamon,  his  closest  friend,  and  most 
ardent  admirer,  lias  to  say  of  the  "make  up"  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  Is  this  the 
stuff  of  which  the  world's  greatest  characters,  heroes,  martyrs,  and  the 
exemplars  for  our  children  are  made?  Surely  it  would  seem  not,  and 
further  comment  is  deemed  unnecessary. 


LINCOLN  NOT  A  CHRISTIAN. 

One  of  the  commonest,  and  one  of  the  most  attractive,  claims  now 
asserted  by  the  admirers  of  Mr.  Lincoln  is,  that  he  was  a  pious  man  and  a 
Christian.  Lamon  tells  us  after  his  assassination  he  was  compared  to 
the  Saviour  and  Redeemer  of  mankind.  One  of  his  reverend  admirers 
compares  his  assassination  to  the  crucifixion  of  our  Lord ;  and  since  both 
of  these  events  occurred  on  Good  Friday,  the  writer  says  "even  the  day 
was  fit."  But  since  Mr.  Lincoln's  "taking  off"  was  in  a  theater,  it  may 
be  noted  that  this  fanatical  divine  says  nothing  as  to  the  fitness  of  the 
place  at  which  this  "taking  off"  occurred. 

Another  divine,  in  an  oration  delivered  this  year  on  the  centennial 
anniversary  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  birth,  begins  it  with  the  words : 

"There  was  a  man  sent  from  God  whose  name  was  Abraham 
Lincoln." 

He  then  speaks  of  him  as  being  "like  unto  Melchizedek,"  and  as  the 
"one  great  man,  and  mystery  and  miracle  of  the  nineteenth  century." 

It  seems  to  us  that  the  real  mystery  here  is  the  fact  that  any  one 
anywhere  should  be  so  foolish  in  this  enlightened  age  as  to  suppose  he 
can  make  sensible  people  swallow  any  such  twaddle,  nonsense  and  sacrilege 
as  this. 

Herndon  says  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  alleged  Christianity : 

'^Lincoln  was  a  deep-grounded  infidel.  He  disliked  and 
despised  churches.  He  never  entered  a  church  except  to  scoff  and 
ridicule.  On  coming  from  a  church  he  would  mimic  the  preacher. 
Before  running  for  any  office,  he  wrote  a  book  against  Christianity 
and  the  Bible.  He  showed  it  to  some  of  his  friends  and  read 
extracts.  A  man  named  Hill  was  greatly  shocked  and  urged 
Lincoln  not  to  publish  it;  urged  it  would  kill  him  politically. 
Hill  got  this  book  in  his  hands,  opened  the  stove  door,  and  it 
went  up  in  flames  and  ashes.  After  that  Lincoln  became  more 
discreet,  and  when  running  for  office  often  used  words  and  phrases 
to  make  it  appear  that  he  was  a  Christian.  He  never  changed  on 
this  subject;  he  lived  and  died  a  deep-grounded  infidel."  (Facts 
and  Falsehoods,  p.  53.)  (See  also  Lamon,  489-193.) 

Lamon  says : 

"Mr.  Lincoln  was  never  a  member  of  any  church,  nor  did  he 
believe  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  sense  understood 
by  evangelical  Christians."  *  *  *  "Overwhelming  testimony 
out  of  many  mouths,  and  none  stronger  than  out  of  his  own, 
place  these  facts  beyond  controversy."  (Lamon,  p.  486.)  *  *  * 
"When  he  went  to  church  at  all,  he  went  to  mock,  and  came  away 
to  mimic."  (Id.,  p.  487.) 


Lainon  further  says : 

"It  was  not  until  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  death  that  his  alleged 
orthodoxy  became  the  principal  topic  of  his  eulogists;  but  since 
then  the  effort  on  the  part  of  some  political  writers  and  speakers 
to  impress  the  public  mind  erroneously  seems  to  have  been  general 
and  systematic."  (Id.,  487.) 

He  then  inserts  the  letters  of  a  number  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  closest 
friends  and  neighbors,  all  of  whom  fully  sustain  his  statements.  One  of 
the^e  says : 

''Lincoln  was  enthusiastic  in  his  infidelity." 

Another  says : 

"Lincoln  went  further  against  Christian  beliefs  and  doctrines 
and  principles  than  any  man  I  ever  heard.  He  shocked  me." 
(M,  488.) 

Another  (Herndon)  says: 

"Lincoln  told  me  a  thousand  times  that  he  did  not  believe 
the  Bible  was  a  revelation  from  God  as  the  Christian  world  con 
tends."  *  *  *  "And  that  Jesus  was  not  the  Son  of  God." 
(Id.,  489.) 

Another  (Judge  David  Davis)  says: 

"He  had  no  faith,  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the  term."  (Id., 
489.) 

Lamon  then  quotes  Mrs.  Lincoln  as  saying : 

"Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  hope  and  no  faith,  in  the  usual  accept 
ance  of  those  words."  (Id.,  489.) 

And  Mr.  Nicolay,  Lincoln's  private  secretary,  as  saying : 

"Mr.  Lincoln  did  not,  to  my  knowledge,  in  any  way  change 
his  religious  views,  opinions  or  beliefs  from  the  time  he  left 
Springfield  to  the  day  of  his  death."  (Id.,  492.) 

It  seems  to  us  that  these  statements  from  these  sources  ought  to 
settle  this  question,  and  that  it  is  wrong,  and  nothing  short  of  an  outrage 
on  the  truth  of  history  to  assert  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was,  or  ever  claimed 
to  be,  a  Christian;  that  such  an  assertion  can  only  reflect  on  those  who 
make  it,  and  must  bring  upon  them  the  application  of  the  maxim,  falsus 
in  uno  falsus  in  omnibus;  for  surely  those  who  are  so  reckless  as  to  mis 
represent  a  fact  of  this  nature  will  not  hesitate  to  misrepresent  any  other 
fact  that  it  suits  them  to  misrepresent  or  to  misstate. 


CONTRADICTIONS  OF  CHARACTER. 

We  come  now  to  consider  some  other  phases  of  this  strange  man,  his 
conduct  and  his  character. 

First.  We  think  it  can  be  safely  affirmed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  one 
of  the  most  secretive,  crafty,  cunning  and  contradictory  characters  in  all 
history,  and  therein  lies,  we  believe,  the  true  reason  why  the  world  now 
deems  him  great.  In  short,,  he  and  his  unscrupulous  eulogists  have,  for 
the  time  being,  outwitted  and  deceived  the  public.  Mr.  Seward  said  his 
"cunning  amounted  to  genius";  and  if  there  ever  was  on  this  earth  a 
judge  of  real  cunning,  William  II.  Seward  was  that  man.  The  best 
evidence  of  the  contradictions  of  his  character  is  furnished  by  Holland, 
one  of  his  most  partizan  admirers  and  biographers.  Mr.  Holland  says,  at 
page  241 : 

"To  illustrate  the  effect  of  the  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Lincoln's 
intercourse  with  men,  it  may  be  said  that  men  who  knew  him 
through  all  his  professional  and  political  life  have  offered  opinions 
as  diametrically  opposed  as  this,  viz. :  That  he  was  a  very  ambi 
tious  man,  and  that  he  was  without  a  particle  of  ambition;  that 
he  was  one  of  the  saddest  men  that  ever  lived,  and  that  he  was 
one  of  the  jolliest  men  that  ever  lived;  that  he  was  very  religious, 
but  that  he  was  not  a  Christian;  that  he  was  a  Christian,  but  did 
not  know  it;  that  he  was  so  far  from  being  a  religious  man  or 
Christian  that  the  least  said  on  that  subject  the  better;  that  he 
was  the  most  cunning  man  in  America,  and  that  he  had  not  a 
particle  of  cunning  in  him;  that  he  had  the  strongest  personal 
attachments,  and  that  he  had  no  personal  attachments  at  all,  only 
a  general  good  feeling  toward  everybody;  that  he  was  a  man  of 
indomitable  will,  and  that  he  was  a  man  almost  without  a  will; 
that  he  was  a  tyrant,  and  that  he  was  the  softest-hearted,  most 
brotherly  man  that  ever  lived;  that  he  was  remarkable  for  his 
pure-mindedness,  and  that  he  was  the  foulest  in  his  jests  and 
stories  of  any  man  in  the  country;  that  he  was  the  wittiest  man, 
and  that  he  was  only  a  retailer  of  the  wit  of  others;  that  his 
apparent  candor  and  fairness  were  only  apparent,  and  that  they 
were  as  real  as  his  head  and  his  hands;  that  he  was  a  boor,  and 
that  he  was  in  all  essential  respects  a  gentleman;  that  he  was  a 
leader  of  the  people,  and  that  he  was  always  led  by  the  people; 
that  he  was  cool  and  impassive,  and  that  he  was  susceptible  of 
the  strongest  passions." 

Now  it  seems  to  us,  with  all  deference  to  the  opinions  of  others,  that 
any  man  who  could  play  the  chameleon  and  present  to  the  world  such 
contrasts  and  contradictions  of  character  as  are  here  described  must  be 
singularly  devoid  of  the  finest  ingredients  which  are  essential  to  real 
greatness,  viz. :  unwavering  and  steadfast  devotion  to  principle  and  to 
duty  and  that  uniform  bearing  towards  his  fellow-man  which  can  only 


10 

lift  those   who  have  these  characteristics   into  the  atmosphere   of  true 
greatness. 

Another  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  friends,  a  brother  lawyer,  having  been  asked 
to  describe  him,  says : 

"My  opinion  of  him  was  formed  by  a  personal  and  profes 
sional  acquaintance  of  over  ten  years,  and  has  not  been  altered 
or  influenced  by  any  of  his  promotions  in  public  life.  The  adula 
tions  by  base  multitudes  of  a  living,  and  the  pageantry  surrounding 
a  dead  President,  do  not  shake  my  well-settled  convictions  of  the 
man's  mental  calibre.  Phrenologically  and  physiologically,  the 
man  was  a  sort  of  monstrosity.  His  frame  was  large,  bony  and 
muscular;  his  head  was  small  and  disproportionately  shaped;  he 
had  large,  square  jaws;  a  large,  heavy  nose;  a  small,  lascivious 
mouth;  soft,  tender,  bluish  eyes.  I  would  say  he  was  a  cross 
between  Venus  and  Hercules.  I  believe  it  to  be  inconsistent  with 
the  law  of  human  organism  for  any  such  creature  to  possess  a  mind 
capable  of  anything  great.  The  man's  mind  partook  of  the  incon 
gruities  of  his  body.  It  was  the  peculiarities  of  his  mental,  and 
the  oddity  of  his  physical  structure,  as  well  as  his  head,  that  singled 
him  out  from  the  mass  of  men."  (See  3  Herndon  <.(•  Weik,  p. 
584.) 

Mr.  Morse  in  the  preface  of  his  biography  makes  this  very  remarkable 
statement.  He  says: 

"If  the  world  ever  settles  down  to  the  acceptance  of  any 
definite,  accurate  picture  of  him  (Lincoln),  it  will  surely  be  a  false 
picture.    There  must  always  be  vague,  indefinable  uncertainties  in 
any  presentation  of  him  which  shall  be  truly  made." 
Is  this  the  record  of  any  other  of  the  world's  great  heroes  and  leaders  ? 
Will  any  accurate  picture  of  any  one  of  them  "surely  be  a  false  picture"? 
What  does  Mr.  Morse  mean  ?    We  confess  we  do  not  know. 

We  have  heretofore  referred  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  secre 
tive,  cunning,  crafty  and  tricky,  and  certainly  his  course  during  his  public 
life,  as  will  be  pointed  out  later  on,  fully  sustains  this  view  of  his  charac 
ter.  We  have  already  noted  what  Mr.  Seward  had  to  say  of  this  feature 
of  his  character.  Herndon  says : 

"The  first  impression  of  a  stranger,  on  seeing  Mr.  Lincoln 
walk,  was  that  he  was  a  tricky  man."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods. 
p.  54.) 

The  duplicity  practiced  by  him  in  preventing  the  renomination  of 
Hamlin,  as  described  by  Colonel  McClure  in  "Lincoln  and  Men  of  War 
Times,"  is  a  striking  illustration  of  his  ability  in  this  direction. 
Stanton  says : 

"I  met  Lincoln  at  the  bar  and  found  him  a  low,  cunning 
clown."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  19.) 

And  several  of  his  biographers  make  reference  to  his  secretiveness, 
cunning  and  craftiness  as  among  his  chief  characteristics. 


11 

OPINIONS  OF  CONTEMPORARIES. 

But  one  of  the  best  evidences  of  the  real  worth  and  true  character 
of  a  man  is  shown  by  the  estimation  in  which  he  was  held  by  his  contem 
poraries  and  those  who  were  brought  in  daily  contact  with  him.  Up  to 
the  time  of  the  assassination  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  several  members  of  his 
cabinet  were  engaged  in  what  Lamon  calls  "venomous  detractions"  of 
his  character  both  as  a  man  and  as  a  statesman.  Nor  were  these  detrac 
tions  by  any  means  confined  to  his  cabinet.  Besides  Seward,  Stanton 
and  Chase  of  the  cabinet,  Hamlin,  Freemont,  Sumner,  Trumbull,  Wade, 
Wilson,  Thad.  Stevens,  Beecher,  Hemy  Winter  Davis,  Greeley  and  Wen 
dell  Phillips  were  among  those  who  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce  and 
belittle  him  in  every  way  in  their  power.  Members  of  his  cabinet  were 
in  the  habit  of  referring  to  him  as  "the  baboon  at  the  other  end  of  the 
avenue,"  and  some  senators  referred  to  him  as  the  "idiot  of  the  White 
House."  (Facts  and  Falsehoods,  p.  9.)  Lamon  says: 

"The  opposition  to  Lincoln  became  more  and  more  offensive. 
The  leaders  resorted  to  every  means  in  their  power  to  thwart  him. 
This  opposition  continued  to  the  end  of  his  life."     (Idem,  p.  32.) 
Nicolay  and  Hay  say  that — 

"Even  to  complete  strangers  Chase  could  not  write  without 
speaking  slightingly  of  President  Lincoln.  He  kept  up  this  habit 
to  the  end  of  Lincoln's  life.  Chase's  attitude  toward  the  President 
varied  between  the  limits  of  active  brutality  and  benevolent  con 
tempt."  (Idem,  p.  12.) 
Colonel  McClure  says : 

"Outside  of  the  cabinet,  the  leaders  were  quite  as  distrustful 
of  President  Lincoln's  ability  to  fill  the  great  office  he  held." 
(Idem,  p.  32.) 

And  Charles  Francis  Adams  (the  elder),  in  his  memorial  address 
on  Mr.  Seward,  says  Mr.  Lincoln  was  "selected  partly  on  account  of  the 
absence  of  positive  qualities,"  and  "with  a  mind  not  open  to  the  nature 
of  the  crisis." 

And  he  further  says : 

"Mr.  Lincoln  (in  his  contact  with  Seward)  could  not  fail  to 
perceive  the  fact  that  whatever  estimate  he  might  put  on  his  own 
natural  judgment,  he  had  to  deal  with  a  superior  in  native  intel 
lectual  power,  in  extent  of  acquirement,  in  breadth  of  philosophi 
cal  experience,  and  in  the  force  of  moral  discipline.  On  the  other 
hand,  Mr.  Seward  could  not  have  been  long  blind  to  the  deficiencies 
of  his  chief  in  these  respects."  (See  Well's  Reply  to  Adams, 
p.  24.) 

DOMINATED  BY  SEWARD  AND   STANTON. 

And  Joseph  Medill,  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  wrote  to  Schuyler 
Colfax  in  1862,  saying : 

"Seward  must  be  got  out  of  the  cabinet ;  he  is  Lincoln's  evil 


12 

genius.    He  has  been  President  de  facto,  and  has  kept  a  sponge 
saturated   with  chloroform  to  Uncle  Abe's  nose  all   the  while, 
except  one  or  two  brief  spells."    (1  Bancroft's  Seward,  p.  — .) 
The  "Pennsylvanian"  characterized  Mr.  Lincoln's  first  inaugural  as 
a  "tiger's  claw  concealed  under  the  fur  of  Sewardism,"  and  the  "Atlas 
and  Argus,"  of  Albany,  as  "weak,  rambling,  loose-jointed"  and  as  "invit 
ing  civil  war."    (See  2  Tar~b ell's  Lincoln,  p.  13.) 

We  refer  to  these  last  citations  especially  to  show,  what  we  have 
always  maintained,  viz. :  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  dominated  by  Seward  and 
Stanton,  in  our  opinion,  two  of  the  worst  men  this  country  has  ever 
produced. 

In  his  speech  at  Cooper  Institute  in  186-1  Wendell  Phillips  said : 

"I  judge  Mr.  Lincoln  by  his  acts,  his  violations  of  the  law, 
his  overthrow  of  liberty  in  the  Northern  States.  I  judge  Mr. 
Lincoln  by  his  words  and  deeds,  and  so  judging  him,  I  am  unwil 
ling  to  trust  Abraham  Lincoln  with  the  future  of  this  country. 
Mr.  Lincoln  is  a  politician;  politicians  are  like  the  bones  of  a 
horse's  fore  shoulder — not  a  straight  one  in  it."  (Facts  and  False 
hoods,  p.  17.) 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  asked  if  he  had  seen  the  speech  of  Wendell  Phillips, 
and  he  said: 

"I  have  seen  enough  to  satisfy  me  that  I  am  a  failure,  not 
only  in  the  opinion  of  the  people  in  rebellion,  but  of  many  dis 
tinguished  politicians  of  my  own  party."  (Lamons  Recollections, 
p.  187.) 

But  enough  of  this;  and  we  have  made  these  citations  only  for  the 
purpose  of  showing,  first,  that  the  character  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  now  pre 
sented  to  the  world,  is  utterly  at  variance  with  his  character  as  under 
stood  by  those  who  knew  him  best  and  were  daily  brought  in  contact  with 
him  whilst  living;  and,  secondly,  to  show  that  if  his  character  was  such 
as  is  presented  to  us  by  those  who  best  knew  him  in  life,  that  character 
was  in  keeping  with  his  conduct  towards  the  people  of  the  South  in  the 
great  war  from  '61  to  '65. 

SOME  VIOLATIONS  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION. 

We,  therefore,  come  now  to  consider  some  of  the  things  (because 
we  can  only  refer  to  a  few  of  them)  which  Mr.  Lincoln  did  in  bringing 
on,  and  in  the  conduct  of,  that  war. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  was  inaugurated  as  President  of  the  United 
States  on  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  he  took  an  oath  to  support  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States.  Says  one  of  his  most  ardent  admirers, 
McClure: 

"As  the  sworn  executive  of  the  nation,  it  was  his  duty  to  obey 
the  Constitution  in  all  its  provisions,  and  he  accepted  that  duty 
without  reservation." 
In  his  first  inaugural,  Mr.  Lincoln  said : 

"I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with 


13 

the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists.    I  believe 
I  have  no  lawful  right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclination  to  do  so." 
And  yet  we  know  that  within  eighteen  months  from  that  time  he 
issued  his  Emancipation  Proclamation. 

EMANCIPATION  PROCLAMATION. 

As  to  this  proclamation,  it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  it  is  claimed 
to  have  been  issued  by  virtue  of  some  kind  of  "war  power"  vested  in  the 
President  by  the  Constitution  and  laws.  The  Northern  historian  Rhodes, 
Vol.  4,  p.  213,  says : 

"There  was,  as  every  one  knows,  no  authority  for  the  procla 
mation  in  the  letter  of  the  Constitution,  nor  was  there  any  statute 
that  warranted  it." 

Let  us  ask,  then,  where  did  Mr.  Lincoln  find  any  authority  to  issue 
it?  Certainly  not  in  the  Constitution.  For,  says  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  in  Ex  parte  Milligan,  4  Wallace  120 : 

"The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  law  for  rulers 
and  people  equally  in  war  and  in  peace,  and  covers  with  the  shield 
of  its  protection  all  classes  of  men  at  all  times  and  under  all  cir 
cumstances.  No  doctrine  involving  more  pernicious  consequences 
was  ever  invented  by  the  wit  of  man  than  that  any  of  its  provisions 
can  be  suspended  during  any  of  the  great  exigencies  of  govern 
ment.  Such  a  doctrine  leads  directly  to  anarchy  or  despotism/' 
And  says  Chief  Justice  Chase,  in  the  same  case,  p.  136-7 : 

"Neither  President,  nor  Congress,  nor  courts,  possess  any 
power  not  given  by  the  Constitution/' 

So  that  the  issuing  of  that  proclamation  (which,  it  is  also  worthy 
of  note,  did  not  even  attempt  to  emancipate  all  the  slaves  in  all  the 
States,  as  generally  supposed,  but  only  those  in  ten  named  States,  and 
only  in  certain  parts  of  some  of  these)  was  a  palpable  violation  of  the 
Constitution  and  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  oath  of  office;  and  the  only  plea  on 
which  the  friends  of  Mr.  Linco-ln  can  justify  his  conduct  is  the  plea  of 
"necessity,"  the  last  refuge  of  every  tyrant. 

DUPLICITY  TOWARD  VIRGINIA  COMMISSIONERS. 

But  before  we  refer  to  other  violations  of  the  Constitution  we  propose 
to  consider  some  acts  of  deceit  and  duplicity  practiced  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  or 
to  which  he  was  a  party,  on  representatives  of  the  South. 

After  the  secession  of  seven  of  the  Southern  States  and  the  formation 
of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  with  its  capital  at  Montgomery,  and  after 
the  failure  of  the  "Peace  Conference"  inaugurated  by  Virginia  in  her 
most  earnest  effort  to  prevent  war  between  the  sections,  and  during  the 
sessions  of  the  Virginia  Convention  that  body  determined  to  send  com 
missioners  to  Washington  to  ascertain,  if  possible,  what  course  Mr. 
Lincoln  intended  to  pursue  towards  the  seceded  States,  since  it  was  impos 
sible  to  determine  this  course  from  the  ambiguous  language  employed  in 


14 

his  inaugural  address.  These  commissioners,  the  Honorables  William 
Ballard  Preston,  Alexander  H.  II.  Stuart  and  George -W.  Randolph,  went 
to  Washington  and  had  an  interview  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  an  account 
of  that  interview  will  be  found  in  the  first  volume  "Southern  Historical 
Society  Papers,"  at  page  443.  At  page  452,  Mr.  Stuart  says : 

"I  remember  that  he  (Lincoln)  used  this  homely  expression, 
'If  I  do  that  (recognize  the  Southern  Confederacy),  what  will 
become  of  my  revenue?  1  might  as  well  shut  up  housekeeping 
at  once.' >: 

But,  says  Mr.  Stuart,  "his  declarations  were  distinctly  pacific,  and 
he  expressly  disclaimed  all  purpose  of  war." 

Mr.  Seward,  the  Secretary  of  State,  and  Mr.  Bates,  the  Attorney- 
General,  also  gave  Mr.  Stuart  the  same  assurances  of  peace.  That  night 
the  commissioners  returned  to  Richmond,  and  the  same  train  on  which 
they  traveled  brought  Mr.  Lincoln's  proclamation  calling  for  seventy-five 
thousand  men  to  wage  a  war  of  coercion  against  the  Southern  States. 

"This  proclamation/'  says  Mr.  Stuart,  "was  carefully  with 
held  from  us,  although  it  was  in  print,  and  we  knew  nothing  of 
it  until  Monday  morning  when  it  appeared  in  the  Richmond 
papers.  When  I  saw  it  at  breakfast,  I  thought  it  must  be  a  mis 
chievous  hoax,  for  I  could  not  believe  Lincoln  guilty  of  such 
duplicity." 

This  proclamation  is  now  conceded  by  nearly  all  Northern  writers 
to  be  a  virtual  declaration  of  war,  which  Congress  alone  has  the  power  to 
declare.  Congress  alone  having  the  power  to  "raise  and  support  armies" ; 
to  "provide  for  calling  forth  the  militia  to  execute  the  laws  of  the  Union, 
suppress  insurrection  and  repel  invasions";  to  "provide  for  organizing, 
arming  and  disciplining  the  militia,  and  for  governing  such  part  of  them 
as  may  be  employed  in  the  service  of  the  United  States." 

And  yet  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  violation  of  the  Constitution  and  of  his 
oath,  did  all  of  these  things  before  Congress  was  allowed  to  assemble 
on  the  4th  of  July,  1861,  and  it  is  said  he  had  an  organized  army  before 
the  assembling  of  Congress  of  over  three  hundred  thousand  men.  We 
know  too  that,  without  any  authority  to  do  so,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  sus 
pend  the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  which  Congress  alone  had 
the  power  to  authorize  the  suspension  of,  according  to  the  decision  of 
Chief  Justice  Taney  in  Merriman's  case,  and  there  are  numerous  other 
decisions  to  the  same  effect. 

DUPLICITY  TOWARDS  CONFEDERATE  COMMISSIONERS. 

But  again,  we  know  too  (at  least,  Mr.  Seward  says  so),  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  a  party  to  the  duplicity  and  deception  practiced  through 
Mr.  Seward  on  the  commissioners  sent  by  the  Confederate  Government 
to  treat  with  him  "with  a  view  to  speedy  adjustment  of  all  questions 
growing  out  of  the  political  separation  upon  such  terms  of  amity  and 
good  will  as  the  respective  interests,  geographical  contiguity  and  future 
welfare  of  the  two  nations  may  render  necessary." 


15 

Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward  practiced  this  deception  on  these 
commissioners  by  promising  the  evacuation  of  Fort  Sumter,  through 
Justices  Campbell  and  Nelson,  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States.  Mr.  Seward  was  charged  by  Judge  Campbell  with  the  enormity 
of  his  conduct  in  regard  to  this  matter,  and  he  was  asked  to  explain  it, 
but  no  explanation  was  ever  made,  simply  because  there  was  none  that 
could  be  made. 

VIOLATIONS  OP  RULES  OF  CIVILIZED  WARFARE. 

But  again,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Armies 
and  Navies  of  the  United  States,  and  he,  therefore,  had  the  power,  and 
it  was  his  duty,  to  see  that  the  war  was  conducted  on  the  principles 
adopted  by  the  Federals  themselves  for  the  government  of  their  armies, 
and  which  are  those  adopted  and  enforced  by  all  civilized  nations.  Two 
of  the  most  important  of  these  rules  were : 

(1)  "That  private  property,  unless  forfeited  by  crimes,  or 
by  offences  of  the  owner  against  the  safety  of  the  army,  or  the 
dignity  of  the  United  States,  and  after  conviction  of  the  owner 
by  court  martial,  can  be  seized  only  by  way  of  military  necessity 
for  the  support  or  benefit  of  the  army  of  the  United  States. 

(2)  "All  wanton  violations  committed  against  persons  in  the 
invaded  country,  all  destruction  of  property  not  commanded  by 
the  authorized  officer,  all  robbery,  all  pillage,  all  sacking  even 
after  taking  a  place  by  main  force,  all  rape,  wounding,  maiming 
or  killing  of  such  inhabitants,  are  prohibited  under  penalty  of 
death,  or  such  other  severe  punishment  as  may  seem  adequate  for 
the  gravity  of  the  offence." 

Now,  we  repeat,  these  were  the  rules  adopted  by  the  United  States 
for  the  government  of  its  armies  in  the  field,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  Mr. 
Lincoln,  as  the  Executive  head  of  the  government  and  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  its  armies,  to  see  that  they  were  respected  and  enforced.  We 
know  how  palpably  these  rules  were  violated  by  Grant,  Sherman,  Sheri 
dan,  Pope,  Butler,  Hunter,  Milroy,  Steinweyer,  and  in  fact  by  nearly  every 
Federal  commander ;  and  we  know  too  that  these  officers  would  not  have 
dared  to  thus  violate  these  rules,  unless  these  violations  had  been  known 
by  them  to  be  sanctioned  by  their  official  head,  Mr.  Lincoln,  from  whom 
they  received  their  appointments  and  commissions,  and  whose  duty  it  was 
to  prevent  such  violations  and  outrages. 

General  McClellan,  a  gentleman  and  a  trained  soldier,  wrote  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  from  Harrison's  Landing  on  July  7,  1862,  saying,  among  other 
things : 

"In  prosecuting  the  war,  all  private  property  and  unarmed 
persons  should  be  strictly  protected,  subject  only  to  the  necessity 
of  military  operations.  All  property  taken  for  military  use  should 
be  paid  or  receipted  for,  pillage  and  waste  should  be  treated  as 
high  crimes,  and  all  unnecessary  trespass  sternly  prohibited,  and 


16 

offensive  demeanor  by  the  military  towards  citizens  promptly  re 
buked."     (See  2  Am.  Conflict,  by  Greeley,  page  248.) 
And  yet,  within  two  weeks  from  that  time,  the  Federal  Secretary 
of  War,  by  order  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  issued  an  order  to  the  military  com 
manders  in  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Missis 
sippi,  Louisiana,  Texas  and  Arkansas,  directing  them  to  seize  and  use 
any  property  belonging  to  the  inhabitants  of  ,  the   Confederacy  which 
might  be  necessary  or  convenient  for  their  several  commands;  and  no 
provision  whatever  was  made  for  any  compensation  to  the  owners  of 
private  property  thus  directed  to  be  seized  and  appropriated. 

SHERMAN'S  CONDUCT. 

General  Sherman  says  in  his  official  report  of  his  famous  (or  rather 
infamous)  march  to  the  sea: 

"We  consumed  the  corn  and  fodder  in  the  region  of  country 

thirty  miles  on  either  side  of  a  line  from  Atlanta  to  Savannah, 

also  the  sweet  potatoes,  hogs,  sheep  and  poultry,  and  carried  off 

more  than  ten  thousand  horses  and  mules.    I  estimate  the  damage 

done  to  the  State  of  Georgia  at  one  hundred  million  dollars,  at 

least  twenty  millions  of  which  inured  to   our  benefit,  and  the 

remainder  was  simply  waste  and  destruction." 

General  Halleck,  who  was  at  that  time  Lincoln's  chief  of  staff,  and, 

therefore,  presumably  in  daily  contact  with  him,  wrote  to  Sherman  on 

the  18th  of  December,  1864: 

"Should  you  capture  Charleston,  I  hope  that  by  some  acci 
dent  the  place  may  be  destroyed,  and  if  a  little  salt  should  be 
thrown  upon  its  site  it  may  prevent  the  future  growth  of  nulli 
fication  and  secession." 
To  which  Sherman  replied  on  the  24th  of  the  same  month: 

"I  will  bear  in  mind  your  hint  as  to  Charleston,  and  do  not 
think  that  salt  will  be  necessary.  When  I  move,  the  Fifteenth 
Corps  will  be  on  the  right  of  the  right  wing,  and  their  position 
will  naturally  bring  them  into  Charleston  first;  and  if  you  have 
watched  the  history  of 'that  corps,  you  will  have  remarked  that 
they  generally  do  their  work  pretty  well,"  etc.  (2  Sherman's 
Memoirs,  pp.  223-227-8.) 

Of  this  infamous  conduct  on  the  part  of  Sherman,  Mr.  Whitelaw 
Eeid,  of  New  York,  our  present  representative  at  the  Court  of  St.  James, 
has  recently  written  in  "Ohio  in  the  War,"  pp.  475-8-9,  referring  especially 
to  the  burning  of  Columbia,  as  follows : 

"It  was  the  most  monstrous  barbarity  of  this  barbarous 
march.  *  *  *  "Before  this  movement  began,  General  Sherman 
begged  permission  to  turn  his  army  loose  in  South  Carolina  and 
devastate  it.  He  used  this  permission  to  the  full.  He  protested 
that  he  did  not  wage  war  upon  women  and  children.  But,  under 
the  operation  of  his  orders,  the  last  morsel  of  food  was  taken  from 


IT 

hundreds  of  destitute  families,  that  his  soldiers  might  feast  in 
needless  and  riotous  abundance.  Before  his  eyes  rose,  day*  after 
day,  the  mournful  clouds  of  smoke  on  every  side,  that  told  of  old 
people  and  their  grandchildren  driven,  in  mid-winter,  from  the 
only  roofs  there  were  to  shelter  them,  by  the  flames  which  the 
wantonness  of  his  soldiers  had  kindled."  *  *  *  "Yet,  if  a 
single  soldier  was  punished  for  a  single  outrage  or  theft  during 
that  entire  movement,  we  have  found  no  mention  of  it  in  all  the 
voluminous  records  of  the  march." 

Let  us  ask,  Who  alone  had  any  semblance  of  authority  to  give  this 
permission  to  Sherman  and  who  gave  it  ?  There  can  be  but  one  answer — 
Abraham  Lincoln,  the  then  President  of  the  United  States.  Will  the 
people  of  the  South  lick  the  hand  that  thus  smote  their  fathers,  their 
mothers,  their  brethren  and  their  sisters  by  now  singing  peans  of  glory  to 
his  name  and  fame  ? 

"Lord  God  of  hosts,  defend  us  yet 
Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget." 

The  New  York  Evening  Post,  one  of  the  most  sectional  papers  in  the 
country,  said  editorially,  a  short  time  since,  that — 

"Mention  of  Sherman  still  opens  flood  gates  of  bitterness.  He 
was  a  purloiner  of  silver;  his  soldiers  spared  neither  women  nor 
children;  he  burned  towns  that  had  not  offended,  and  cities  that 
had  surrendered ;  and  he  spared  not  even  the  convents  occupied  by 
women  of  his  own  religious  faith."  (See  Myers  latter  in  "Con 
federate  Cause  and  Conduct,"  p.  84.) 

GRANT  AND   SHERIDAN'S  CONDUCT. 

On  the  5th  of  August,  1864,  General  Grant  wrote  to  General  David 
Hunter,  who  preceded  Sheridan  in  command  of  the  Valley : 

"In  pushing  up  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  where  it  is  expected 
you  will  have  to  go  first  or  last,  it  is  desirable  that  nothing  should 
be  left  to  invite  the  enemy  to  return.  Take  all  provisions,  forage 
and  stock  wanted  for  the  use  of  your  command;  such  as  cannot 
be  consumed,  destroy" 

And  it  was  Grant  who  suggested  to  Sheridan  the  order  that  Sheridan 
executed  in  so  desolating  the  Valley  that  "a  crow  flying  over  it  would  have 
to  carry  his  own  rations."  Sheridan  says : 

"I  have  destroyed  over  two  thousand  barns  filled  with  wheat 
and  hay  and  farming  implements;  over  seventy  mills  filled  with 
flour  and  wheat;  have  driven  in  front  of  the  army  over  four 
thousand  head  of  stock,  and  have  killed  and  issued  to  the  troops  not 
less  than  three  thousand  sheep.  This  destruction  embraces  the 
Luray  Valley  and  Little  Fort  Valley,  as  well  as  the  main  Valley." 


18 

Contrast  these  orders,  and  this  conduct,  with  General  Lee'e  Cham- 
bersburg  order  of  June  27,  1863,  when  his  army  invaded  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  conduct  of  his  army  in  that  hostile  country,  and  you  have  the 
difference  between  barbarous  and  civilized  warfare.*  General  Lee's 
order  was  approved  by  President  Davis ;  Grant's,  Sherman's,  Sheri 
dan's  and  others  by  President  Lincoln.  To  which  of  these  two  will  yon 
men  and  women  of  the  South  render  the  meed  of  your  reverence,  honor 
and  respect?  I  know  your  answer  because  I  know  and  honor  you. 

But  this  is,  by  no  means,  all.  Judge  Jeremiah  S.  Black,  of  Pennsyl 
vania,  writing  to  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  said : 

"I  will  not  pain  you  by  a  recital  of  the  wanton  cruelties  they 
(the  Lincoln  administration)  inflicted  upon  unoffending  citizens. 
I  have  neither  space,  nor  skill,  nor  time,  to  paint  them.  A  life- 
eized  picture  of  them  would  cover  more  canvas  than  there  is  on 
earth.  *  *  *  Since  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  nothing  has  occurred 
to  cast  so  much  disrepute  on  republican  institutions."  ( See  Black's 
Essays,  p.  153.) 

Verily, 

"He  left  a  Corsair's  name  to  other  times 
Linked  with  one  virtue  and  a  thousand  crimes." 

*  "HEADQUARTERS  A.  N.  V., 
"CHAMBEBSBURG,  PA.,  June  27,  1863. 
"GENERAJL  ORDERS  No.  73. 

"The  Commanding  General  has  marked  with  satisfaction  the  conduct  of 
the  troops  on  the  march  and  confidently  anticipates  results  commensurate 
with  the  high  spirit  they  have  manifested.  No  troops  could  have  displayed 
greater  fortitude  or  better  performed  the  arduous  marches  of  the  first  ten 
days.  Their  conduct  in  other  respects  has,  with  few  exceptions,  been  in 
keeping  with  their  character  as  soldiers,  and  entitles  them  to  approbation 
and  praise. 

"There  have,  however,  been  instances  of  forgetfulness  on  the  part  of  some, 
that  they  have  in  keeping  the  yet  unsullied  reputation  of  the  army,  and  the 
duties  exacted  of  us  by  Civilization  and  Christianity,  are  not  less  obligatory 
in  the  country  of  the  enemy  than  in  our  own.  The  Commanding  General 
considers  that  no  greater  disgrace  could  befall  the  army,  and  through  it  our 
whole  people,  than  the  perpetration  of  the  barbarous  outrages  upon  the 
innocent  and  defenceless  and  wanton  destruction  of  private  property  that 
have  marked  the  course  of  the  enemy  in  our  own  country.  Such  proceedings 
not  only  disgrace  the  perpetrators  and  all  connected  with  them,  but  are 
subversive  of  the  discipline  and  efficiency  of  the  army  and  destructive  of  the 
ends  of  our  present  movements.  It  must  be  remembered  that  we  make  war 
only  on  armed  men,  and  that  we  cannot  take  vengeance  for  the  wrongs  our 
people  have  suffered  without  lowering  ourselves  in  the  eyes  of  all  whose 
abhorrence  has  been  excited  by  the  atrocities  of  our  enemy,  and  offending 
against  Him  to  whom  vengeance  belongeth,  without  whose  favor  and  support 
our  efforts  must  all  prove  in  vain.  The  Commanding  General  therefore 
earnestly  exhorts  the  troops  to  abstain,  with  most  scrupulous  care,  from 
unnecessary  or  wanton  injury  to  private  property;  and  to  enjoin  upon  all 
officers  to  arrest  and  bring  to  summary  punishment  all  who  shall  in  any  way 
offend  against  the  orders  on  this  subject.  "R.  E.  LEE,  General" 


19 

GENERAL  LEE'S  LETTER  TO   THE   PEOPLE  OF    MARYLAND. 

In  the  address  issued  by  General  Lee  to  the  people  of  Maryland 
when  his  army  first  entered  that  State,  in  September,  1862,  he  said: 

"It  is  right  that  you  should  know  the  purpose  that  brought 
the  army  under  my  command  within  the  limits  of  your  State, 
so  far  as  that  purpose  concerns  yourselves.  The  people  of  the 
Confederate  States  have  long  watched  with  the  deepest  smypathy 
the  wrongs  and  outrages  that  have  been  inflicted  upon  the  citizens 
of  a  commonwealth  allied  to  the  States  of  the  South  by  the 
strongest  social,  political  and  commercial  ties.  They  have  seen 
with  profound  indignation  their  sister  State  deprived  of  every 
right  and  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  conquered  province.  Under 
the  pretense  of  supporting  the  Constitution,  but  in  violation  of 
its  most  valuable  provisions,  your  citizens  have  been  arrested  and 
imprisoned  upon  no  charge,  and  contrary  to  all  forms  of  law.  The 
faithful  and  manly  protest  against  this  outrage  made  by  the  ven 
erable  and  illustrious  Marylander  (Taney),  to  whom  in  better 
days  no  citizen  appealed  for  right  in  vain,  was  treated  with  scorn 
and  contempt ;  the  government  of  your  chief  city  has  been  usurped 
by  armed  stangers ;  your  legislature  has  been  dissolved  by  the  un 
lawful  arrest  of  its  members ;  freedom  of  the  press  and  of  speech 
has  been  suppressed;  words  have  been  declared  offences  by  an 
arbitrary  decree  of  the  Federal  Executive,  and  citizens  ordered 
to  be  tried  by  a  military  commission  for  what  they  may  dare  to 
speak.  Believing  that  the  people  of  Maryland  possessed  a  spirit 
too  lofty  to  submit  to  such  a  government,  the  people  of  the  South 
have  long  wished  to  aid  you  in  throwing  off  this  foreign  yoke,  to 
enable  you  again  to  enjoy  the  inalienable  rights  of  freedom,  and 
restore  independence  and  sovereignty  to  your  State.  In  obedience 
to  this  wish,  our  army  has  come  among  you,  and  is  prepared  to 
assist  you  with  the  power  of  its  arms  in  regaining  the  rights  of 
which  you  have  been  despoiled. 

"This,  citizens  of  Maryland,  is  our  mission,  so  far  as  you  are 
concerned.  No  constraint  upon  your  free  will  is  intended;  no 
intimidation  will  be  allowed  within  the  limits  of  this  army,  at 
least.  Mary  landers  shall  once  more  enjoy  their  ancient  freedom 
of  thought  and  speech.  We  know  no  enemies  among  you,  and 
will  protect  all,  of  every  opinion.  It  is  for  you  to  decide  your 
destiny  freely  and  without  constraint.  This  army  will  respect 
your  choice,  whatever  it  may  be;  and  while  the  Southern  people 
will  rejoice  to  welcome  you  to  your  natural  position  among  them, 
they  will  only  welcome  you  when  you  come  of  your  own  free  will 

"R.  E.  LEE,  General  Commanding." 

No  more  severe  or  more  just  arraignment  of  the  tyranny  practiced 


20 

by  Lincoln's  administration  can  be  written  than  this,  and  that  it  is  true 
no  one  will  have  the  temerity  to  deny.  The  contrast  here  presented,  too, 
is  as  striking  as  it  is  painful.  It  is  that  between  the  Christian  soldier  and 
the  Godless  tyrant. 

WHAT  NORTHERN  PEOPLE  THOUGHT  IN  NOVEMBER,   1864. 

And  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  in  the  election  held  in 
November,  1864,  between  Lincoln  and  McClellan,  in  which  the  platform 
of  McClellan's  party  charged  that  the  war  had  been  a  failure;  that  the 
Constitution  had  been  disregarded  in  every  part;  that  justice,  humanity, 
liberty  and  the  public  welfare  demanded  that  immediate  efforts  be  made 
for  a  cessation  of  hostilities  with  the  ultimate  convention  of  all  the  States 
that  these  may  be  restored  on  the  basis  of  a  federal  union  of  all  the  States; 
*  *  *  that  they  considered  the  administration's  "usurpation  of  ex 
traordinary  and  dangerous  powers  not  granted  by  the  Constitution"  as 
"calculated  to  prevent  a  restoration  of  the  union";  and  which  further 
charged  that  administration  with  "woeful  disregard  of  its  duty  to  prisoners 
of  war" ;  that  during  this  canvass  Lincoln  was  denounced  as  a  "remorse 
less  tyrant,"  and  his  administration  as  the  "Rebellion  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln."  That  out  of  a  vote  of  four  millions  of  the  Northern  people  cast 
in  that  election,  nearly  one-half,  viz.,  1,800,000  voted  for  McClellan  and 
in  condemnation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  on  the  foregoing  platform  and  charges. 
So  with  this  evidence  of  the  condemnation  of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  ad 
ministration,  just  five  months  before  his  death,  by  so  many  of  his  own 
people,  we  must  be  excused  if  we  decline  to  accept  the  portraiture  of  his 
character  and  conduct  as  now  so  persistently  presented  to  us  by  these 
same  people,  and  we  must  be  excused  too  for  being  skeptical  about  their 
sincerity  in  believing  in  the  truthfulness  of  that  portraiture  themselves. 

We  charge,  and  without  the  fear  of  successful  contradiction,  that  Mr. 
Lincoln,  as  the  head  of  the  Federal  Government,  and  the  Commander- 
in-chief  of  its  armies,  was  directly  responsible  for  the  outrages  committed 
by  his  subordinates;  and  that  the  future  and  unprejudiced  historian 
will  so  hold  him.  responsible,  we  verily  believe. 

TREATMENT  OF  PRISONERS. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  directly  responsible  for  all  the 
sorrows,  sufferings  and  deaths  of  prisoners  on  both  sides  during  the  war. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  Confederate  Government  enacted  that 
"rations  furnished  prisoners  of  war  shall  be  the  same  in  quantity  and 
quality  as  those  furnished  to  enlisted  men  in  the  army  of  the  Confed 
eracy"  ;  that  "hospitals  for  prisoners  of  war  are  placed  on  the  same  footing 
as  other  Confederate  States'  hospitals  in  all  respects,  and  will  be  managed 
accordingly."  And  General  Lee  says,  "The  orders  always  were  that  the 
whole  field  should  be  treated  alike;  parties  were  sent  out  to  take  the 
Federal  wounded  as  well  as  Confederate,  and  the  surgeons  were  told  to 
treat  the  one  as  they  did  the  other.  These  orders  given  by  me  were 
respected  on  every  field." 


At  the  very  beginning  of  hostilities,  the  Confederate  authorities  were 
likewise  most  anxious  to  establish  a  cartel  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners. 
The  Federals  refused  to  do  this  until  July  22,  1862,  and  almost  directly 
after  this  cartel  was  established  it  was  violated  and  annulled  by  the 
Federal  authorities  with  Mr.  Lincoln  at  their  head.  On  the  6th  of  July, 
1861,  Mr.  Davis  wrote  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  saying: 

"It  is  the  desire  of  this  government  so  to  conduct  the  war 
now  existing  as  to  mitigate  its  horrors  as  far  as  may  be  possible, 
and  with  this  intent  its  treatment  of  the  prisoners  captured  by 
its  forces  has  been  marked  by  the  greatest  humanity  and  leniency 
consistent  with  public  obligation." 

This  letter  was  sent  to  Washington  by  a  special  messenger  (Colonel 
Taylor),  but  he  was  refused  even  an  audience  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and 
although  a  reply  was  promised,  no  reply  to  it  was  ever  made. 

On  the  3d  of  July,  1863,  Mr.  Davis  addressed  another  letter  to  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  tried  to  send  it  to  him  by  the  hands  of  Vice-President 
Stephens,  saying : 

"I  believe  I  have  just  grounds  of  complaint  against  the  officers 
and  forces  under  your  command  for  breach  of  the  cartel;  and 
being  myself  ready  to  execute  it  at  all  times,  and  in  good  faith, 
I  am  not  justified  in  doubting  the  existence  of  the  same  disposition 
on  your  part.  In  addition  to  this  matter,  I  have  to  complain  of 
the  conduct  of  your  officers  and  troops  in  many  parts  of  the 
country,  who  violate  all  the  rules  of  war  by  carrying  on  hostilities 
not  only  against  armed  foes,  but  against  non-combatants,  aged 
men,  women  and  children,  while  others  not  only  seize  such  property 
as  is  required  for  the  use  of  your  troops,  but  destroy  all  private 
property  within  their  reach,"  etc. 

And  he  implored  Mr.  Lincoln  to  take  steps  "to  prevent  further 
misunderstanding  as  to  the  terms  of  the  cartel,  and  to  enter  into  such 
arrangement  and  understanding  about  the  mode  of  carrying  on  hostilities 
between  the  belligerents  as  shall  confine  the  severities  of  the  war  within 
such  limits  as  are  rightfully  imposed,  not  only  by  modern  civilization, 
but  by  our  common  Christianity." 

And  yet  Mr.  Stephens,  with  a  letter  of  this  import,  was  not  even 
permitted  to  go  through  the  lines  to  carry  it. 

Mr.  Charles  A.  Dana,  the  Assistant  Federal  Secretary  of  War,  the 
same  man  who  permitted  the  shackels  to  be  placed  upon  Mr.  Davis,  says : 

"The  evidence  must  be  taken  as  conclusive:  It  proves  that 
it  was  not  the  Confederate  authorities  who  insisted  on  keeping  our 
prisoners  in  distress,  want  and  disease,  but  the  commander  of 
our  armies." 

And  that  commander-in-chief  of  their  armies,  the   one  who  had 


22 

absolute  control  of  the  whole  matter,  was  Abraham  Lincoln.  We  know 
that  President  Davis  even  went  so  far  when  the  prisoners  at  Anderson- 
ville  were  suffering  from  disease  and  want,  which  the  Confederate  Govern 
ment  could  not  relieve  or  prevent,  as  to  send  a  delegation  of  these  prisoners 
to  Mr.  Lincoln  to  beg  him  to  renew  the  cartel  for  their  exchange,  and 
Mr.  Lincoln  sent  these  men  back  to  die;  and,  further,  that  when  Mr. 
Davis  offered  to  send  home  from  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  of  these  prisoners 
at  one  time,  without  demanding  any  equivalent  in  exchange,  this  humane 
offer  was  indignantly  rejected ;  that  medicines  were  declared  "contraband 
of  war,"  and  the  Federal  Government  not  only  refused  to  furnish  these 
for  their  own  prisoners,  to  be  administered  by  its  own  doctors,  but  refused 
to  allow  the  Confederates  the  means  to  procure  them  when  they  were 
informed  that  these  prisoners  were  dying  on  account  of  the  need  of  these 
medicines.  Hence  we  say  that  Mr.  Lincoln,  as  the  head  of  the  Federal 
Government  and  the  Commander-in-chief  of  its  armies,  is  directly  re 
sponsible  for  all  this  misconduct  and  cruelty  on  the  part  of  his  subordi 
nates,  and  for  the  deaths,  sufferings  and  sorrows  which  ensued  in  conse 
quence  of  that  misconduct  and  cruelty. 

WAS  HE  A  TRUE  FRIEND  OF  THE  SOUTH  ? 

But  it  is  often  said  that,  notwithstanding  all  these  things,  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  a  friend  of  the  Southern  people,  and  that  his  death  was 
a  great  misfortune  to  the  South,  since  he  would  have  been  able  to  prevent 
the  outrages,  severities  and  cruelties  of  "Reconstruction."  As  some 
evidence  of  this,  it  is  claimed,  first,  that  in  the  so-called  "Peace  Confer 
ence"  held  in  Hampton  Eoads  in  February,  1865,  Mr.  Lincoln  offered, 
if  the  South  would  return  to  the  Union,  that  the  Federal  Government 
would  pay  for  the  slaves  by  making  an  appropriation  of  four  hundred 
millions  of  dollars  for  that  purpose.  Indeed,  it  is  claimed  that  he  said 
to  Mr.  Stephens: 

"Let  me  write  'Union'  at  the  top  of  this  page,  and  you  may 
then  write  any  other  terms  of  settlement  you  may  deem  proper." 

We  undertake  to  say,  after  a  careful  reading  of  the  joint  and  several 
reports  of  our  commissioners  (Messrs.  Stephens,  Hunter  and  Campbell), 
and  after  reading  the  message  sent  by  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Congress  after  his 
return  from  that  conference,  that  there  is  no  just  foundation  for  any 
such  claim. 

Mr.  Lincoln  himself  says: 

"No  papers  were  exchanged  or  produced,  and  it  was  in  ad 
vance  agreed  that  the  conversation  was  to  be  informal  and  verbal 
merely.  On  our  part,  the  whole  substance  of  the  instructions  to 
the  Secretary  of  State  hereinbefore  recited  was  stated  and  insisted 
upon,  and  nothing  was  said  inconsistent  therewith/9 

The  instructions  to  the  Secretary  here  referred  to  in  reference  to 
slavery  were: 


23 

"No  receding  by  the  Executive  of  the  United  States  on  the 
slavery  question  from  the  position  assumed  thereon  in  the  annual 
message  to  Congress  and  in  preceding  documents/' 

And  the  terms  here  referred  to  in  the  annual  message  to  Congress 
were: 

"7  retract  nothing  heretofore  said  as  to  slavery.  I  repeat 
the  declaration  made  a  year  ago,  that  while  I  remain  in  my  present 
position  I  will  not  attempt  to  retract  or  modify  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation." 

Certainly  there  was  nothing  in  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  which 
indicated  any  intention  or  desire  on  his  part  to  make  any  compensation 
for  the  slaves  of  the  Southern  people. 

And  Colonel  McClure,  who,  as  before  stated,  is  a  partizan  of  Mr. 
Lincoln,  and  claims  everything  for  him  that  could  possibly  be  claimed, 
says  this  matter  was  not  even  suggested  by  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Mr.  Stephens, 
for  reasons  which  he  attempts  to  explain.  (See  Lincoln  and  Men  of  War 
Times,  p.  92.) 

But  again  it  is  claimed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  would  have  been  most 
lenient  and  kind  in  his  treatment  of  the  people  of  the  South  after  the 
termination  of  the  war,  and  that  hence  his  death  was  a  great  calamity  to 
the  South.  The  sole  basis  of  this  claim  seems  to  be  that  when  Mr.  Lin 
coln  came  to  Richmond  on  the  5th  of  April,  1865,  two  days  after  the 
evacuation  by  the  Confederates,  he  had  a  conference  with  Judge  Camp 
bell,  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  of  the  Confederacy,  and  Mr.  Gustavus  A. 
Myers,  then  a  member  of  the  Legislature  from  Eichmond,  and  suggested 
to  them  to  have  the  Virginia  Legislature  re-assemble  for  the  purpose 
of  restoring  Virginia  to  the  Union.  In  a  statement  published  in  Vol.  36, 
page  252,  of  the  "Southern  Historical  Society  Papers,"  Judge  Campbell 
gives  an  interesting  account  of  this  interview  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  says, 
among  other  things: 

"Mr.  Lincoln  desired  the  Legislature  of  Virginia  to  be  called 
together  to  ascertain  and  test  its  disposition  to  co-operate  with  him 
in  terminating  the  war.  He  desired  it  to  recall  the  troops  of  Vir 
ginia  from  the  Confederate  service,  and  to  attorn  to  the  United 
States  and  to  submit  to  the  national  authority/' 

Judge  Campbell  further  says  that  whilst  he  (Campbell)  expressed 
the  opinion  that  General  Lee's  army  was  in  such  a  condition  that  it  could 
not  be  held  together  for  many  days,  "Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  fully  credit  the 
judgment  that  was  expressed  as  to  the  condition  of  General  Lee's  army. 
He  could  not  realize  the  fact  that  its  dissolution  was  certain  in  any  event, 
and  that  its  day  was  spent.  He  knew  that  if  the  'very  Legislature'  that 
had  been  sitting  in  Richmond  were  convened  and  did  vote  as  he  desired, 
that  it  would  disorganize  and  discourage  the  Confederate  army  and  gov 
ernment." 


24 

In  our  opinion,  this  was  the  true  and  only  reason  why  Mr.  Lincoln 
wanted  the  Legislature  recalled.  It  was  that  it  might  order  the  with 
drawal  of  the  Virginia  troops,  with  General  Lee  at  their  head,  from  the 
Army  of  Northern  Virginia,  and  in  that  way  destroy  the  efficiency  of 
that  army. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  Mr.  Lincoln's  motives  and  purposes 
at  that  time,  we  know  that  as  soon  as  he  knew  that  the  Army  of  Northern 
Virginia  had  surrendered,  and  only  two  days  before  his  assassination,  he 
recalled  the  suggestion  for  the  assembling  of  the  Virginia  Legislature 
because  of  the  fact,  as  alleged,  that  conditions  had  changed  since  he  made 
that  suggestion;  and  the  great  change  in  these  conditions  was  the  sur 
render  of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia.  And  Colonel  McClure  himself 
Bays,  at  page  227 : 

"What  policy  of  reconstruction  Lincoln  would  have  adopted, 
had  he  lived  to  complete  his  great  work,  cannot  now  be  known." 

We  have  reached  the  conclusion,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  good 
reason  to  believe,  and  certainly  no  satisfactory  evidence  on  which  to  found 
the  opinion,  that  had  Mr.  Lincoln  survived  the  war  he  would  have  been 
either  willing  or  able  to  withstand  the  oppressions  of  the  malicious  and  re 
vengeful  men  in  his  cabinet  and  in  Congress  in  their  determination  to  fur 
ther  punish  the  people  of  the  already  prostrate  and  bleeding  South,  to 
whicJi  condition  of  affairs  he  had  done  so  much  to  contribute.  A  striking 
evidence  of  this  is  furnished  by  the  statement  of  Admiral  Porter,  who 
was  with  Mr.  Lincoln  when  he  came  to  Richmond  immediately  after  the 
evacuation.  Admiral  Porter  says  that  when  Lincoln  told  him  he  had 
authorized  the  re-assembling  of  the  Virginia  Legislature,  and  began  to 
reflect  on  what  Seward  would  have  to  say  about  this,' he  (Lincoln)  sent 
a  messenger  post  haste  to  General  Weitzel  and  revoked  the  order  before 
he  left  Richmond.  (See  Porter's  Naval  History,  p.  779.) 

Although  Andrew  Johnson  was,  as  we  have  heard  General  Wise  say  of 
him  "as  dirty  as  cart-wheel  grease,"  we  have  always  believed  he  withstood 
the  malice  of  these  bad  men  longer  than  Mr.  Lincoln  would  have  done, 
and  that  he  (Johnson)  really  tried  to  help  the  South  after  the  war,  as  we 
know  that  he  tried  to  prevent  the  adoption  and  carrying  out  of  the  wicked 
"Reconstruction"  measures. 

We  know  that  on  May  9,  1865,  within  less  than  a  month  from  his 
inauguration,  Johnson  issued  an  executive  order  restoring  Virginia  to  the 
Union;  that  on  the  22d  of  the  same  month  he  proclaimed  that  all  the 
Southern  ports,  except  four  in  Texas,  should  be  opened  to  foreign  com 
merce  on  July  1, 1865 ;  that  on  the  29th  of  May  he  issued  a  general  amnesty 
proclamation  (with  some  notable  exceptions),  after  which  the  irreconcil 
able  differences  between  him  and  his  party  became  so  fierce  and  bitter  that 
he  was  obstructed  in  every  way  possible,  and  came  very  near  being  im 
peached,  and  mainly  on  account  of  his  attempted  acts  of  kindness  to  the 
Southern  people.  So  that,  we  are  constrained  to  say,  if  Mr.  Lincoln  was  a 
true  friend  of  the  South,  Good  Lord,  deliver  us  from  our  friends." 


25 

CAREER   IN  DETAIL. 

But  let  us  now  examine  Mr.  Lincoln's  career,  somewhat  in  detail, 
and  see  what  we  can  find  in  it  to  entitle  him  to  rank  with  the  good  and 
great  men  of  the  earth. 

(1)  Up  to  the  time  he  attained  his  majority  he  was  literally  a  "hewer 
of  wood  and  a  drawer  of  water."     This  was,  of  course,  his  misfortune, 
a  thing  for  which  he  was  in  no  way  to  blame,  and  we  only  refer  to  it  as 
a  fact,  and  not  by  way  of  reproach  to  him  in  any  sense. 

(2)  For  three  or  four  years  after  attaining  his  majority,  he  first 
kept  a  store,  then  a  post  office,  did  some  surveying,  and  employed  his 
leisure  hours  in  studying  and  preparing  himself  for  the  bar. 

(3)  He  practiced  law  about  twenty-five  years,  and  made  but  little 
reputation  as  a  lawyer,  beyond  the  fact  that  he  was  regarded  as  a  shrewd, 
sensible  and  honest  lawyer.    During  that  period  he  was  sent  to  the  Illinois 
Legislature  four  times,  but  made  little  or  no  reputation  as  a  legislator. 

(4)  In  1847  he  was  elected  to  Congress,  and  served  only  one  term. 
He  certainly  made  no  reputation  as  a  member  of  Congress,  unless  his 
speech  advocating  the  right  of  secession,  as  referred  to  by  Judge  Black 
in  his  Essays,  entitled  him  to  such  distinction. 

(5)  We  next  hear  of  him  in  the  canvass  with  Stephen  A.  Douglas 
for  the  Senate,  in  which  he  did  make  reputation  both  as  a  ready  debater 
and  stump  speaker,  and  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  ambitious  and 
shrewdest  politicians  of  his  time.    He  was  twice  defeated  for  the  Senate, 
but  the  reputation  won  in  his  last  canvass  with  Douglas  laid  the  founda 
tion  for  his  candidacy  for  the  presidency,  although  Seward  was,  by  far 
the  foremost  candidate  for  that  office  up  to  the  time  of  the  meeting  of  the 
Convention.     This  convention,  fortunately  for  Lincoln,  met  in  Chicago, 
where  his  "boosters"  did  most  effective  work  in  his  behalf.    He  was  only 
nominated  by  means  of  a  corrupt  bargain  entered  into  between  his  rep 
resentatives  and  those  of  Simon  Cameron,  of  Pennsylvania,  and  Caleb  B. 
Smith,  of  Indiana,  by  which  Cabinet  positions  were  pledged  both  to 
Cameron  and  to  Smith  in  consideration  for  the  votes  controlled  by  them, 
in  the  convention,  and  which  pledges  Lincoln  fulfilled,  and,  in  that  way 
made  himself  a  party  to  these  corrupt  bargains.     (1  Morse.  169;  Lamon, 
449.)     He  was  nominated  purely  as  the  sectional  candidate  of  a  sectional 
party,  and  not  only  received  no  votes  in  several  of  the  Southern  States, 
but  lie  failed  to  get  a  popular  majority  of  the  section  which  nominated 
and  elected  him,  and  received  nearly  one  million  votes  less  than  a  popular 
majority  of  the  vote  of  the  country.     (1  Morse,  178.) 

(6)  After  his  election,  he  sneaked  into  the  national  Capitol  at  night 
in  a  way  he  was,  and  ought  to  have  been,  ashamed  of  the  rest  of  his  life, 
and  commenced  his  administration  by  acts  of  deceit  and  duplicity  and  by 
palpable  violations  of  the  Constitution  he  had  sworn  to  support,  as  already 
set  forth  herein,  and  by  plunging  the  country  into  war  without  any 
authority  or  justification  for  so  doing. 

(7)  At  the  end  of  two  years  his  administration  had  become  so  un- 


26 

popular  and  was  deemed  so  inefficient,  that  the  appointment  of  a  Dictator 
was  seriously  considered,  and  Lamon  says,  if  Grant  had  not  succeeded  in 
capturing  Yicksburg  in  July,  1863,  "certain  it  is  that  President  Lincoln 
would  have  been  deposed,  and  a  Dictator  would  have  been  placed  in  his 
stead  as  chief  executive,  until  peace  could  be  restored  to  the  nation  by 
separation  or  otherwise."  (Lamon' s  Recollections,  183-4.) 

(8)  We  have  already  alluded  to  his  standing  with  the  Northern 
people  at  the  election  in  November,  1864,  when  nearly  one-half  of  these 
people  voted  gainst  him,  and  when,  but  for  the  improper  use  of  the 
army  in  controlling  the  election,  it  is  believed  he  would  have  been  defeated 
by  McClellan,  since  in  many  of  the  States  carried  by  Lincoln  the  popular 
vote  was  very  close.    (See  Butler's  Book  and  McClellan's  Platform.) 

(9)  Between  the  time  of  his  second  election  and  his  assassination, 
the  South  had  become  so  completely  exhausted,  that  he  had  only  to  keep 
his  armies",  as  already  marshalled,  in  the  field,  to  accomplish  its  defeat. 
Says  Lamon: 

"At  the  time  McClellan  took  command  of  that  army  (Army 
of  the  Potomac),  the  South  was  powerful  in  all  the  elements  of 
successful  warfare.  It  had  much  changed  when  General  Grant  took 
command.  Long  strain  had  greatly  weakened  and  exhausted  the 
resources  of  the  South."  (Lamon 's  Recollections,  p.  199.) 

(10)  And  Lamon  says  of  him  at  the  time  of  his  election: 

"Few  men  believed  that  Mr.  Lincoln  possessed  a  single  quali 
fication  for  his  great  office."  *  *  *  "They  said  he  was  good 
and  honest  and  well  meaning,  but  they  took  care  not  to  pretend 
that  he  was  great.  He  was  thoroughly  convinced  that  there  was 
too  much  truth  in  this  view  of  his  character.  He  felt  deeply  and 
keenly  his  lack  of  experience  in  the  conduct  of  public  affairs.  He 
spoke  then  and  afterwards  about  the  duties  of  the  presidency  with 
much  diffidence,  and  said  with  a  story  about  a  justice  of  the  peace 
in  Illinois,  that  they  constituted  his  'great  first  case  misunder 
stood.'*  (Lamon,  p.  468.) 

That  he  had  no  just  appreciation  of  the  gravity  of  the  situation,  or 
of  the  duties  of  the  office  he  was  about  to  assume,  is  best  evinced  by  the 
character  of  the  speeches  made  by  him  en  route  to  Washington  to  be 
inaugurated.  Of  these  speeches,  the  Northern  historian,  Rhodes.  (3 
Rhodes,  303),  thus  writes: 

"In  his  speeches  the  commonplace  abounds,  and  though  he 
had  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  his  sallies  of  wit  grated  on  earnest 
men,  who  read  in  quiet  his  daily  utterances.  The  ridiculous,  which 
lies  FO  near  the  sublime,  was  reached  when  this  man,  proceeding 
to  grave  duties,  and  the  great  fame  that  falls  to  few  in  the  whole 
world,  asked  at  the  town  of  Wakefield,  for  a  little  girl  correspondent 
of  his,  at  whose  suggestion  he  had  made  a  change  in  his  personal 


27 

appearance,  and  when  she  came,  he  kissed  her  and  said,  'You  see 
I  have  let  these  whiskers  grow  for  you,  Grace/ '' 

But  let  us  ask,  can  statesmanship  be  predicated  of  any  American, 
who  expressed  the  opinion,  as  Mr.  Lincoln  did,  that  the  relations  of  the 
States  to  the  Union  were  the  same  as  those  of  the  counties  to  the  States 
of  which  they  severally  formed  a  part  ?  Surely  comment  is  unnnecessary. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  in  his  cabinet  five  of  the  ablest  men  then  in  the 
country,  and  we  think  it  fair  to  assume  that  these  men  are  entitled  to 
much,  if  not  most,  of  the  credit  (if  it  can  be  so  called)  now  so  recklessly 
and  unsparingly  ascribed  to  him.  But  did  it  require  genius  or  ability  in 
any  man,  or  set  of  men,  to  wear  out,  as  by  "attrition,"  six  hundred 
thousand  half-starved  and  poorly  equipped  men  with  two  million  eight 
hundred  thousand  well-fed  and  thoroughly  equipped  men  with  unlimited 
resources  of  all  kinds? 

Napoleon  said : 

"A  man  who  exhibited  no  evidence  of  greatness  before  reaching 
forty,  has  no  element  of  greatness  in  him." 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  fifty-two  when  he  was  elected  President,  and  Lamon 
says  no  one  pretended  he  had  developed  any  element  of  greatness  up  to 
that  time. 

So  that,  with  every  disposition  to  write  truthfully  about  Mr.  Lincoln, 
we  are  unable  to  find  in  his  career  any  substantial  basis  for  the  great 
name  and  fame  now  claimed  for  him  by  his  admirers  both  at  the  North 
and  at  the  South,  and  certainly  nothing  either  in  his  character,  career 
or  conduct  to  engender  veneration,  admiration  and  love  for  his  memory 
on  the  part  of  the  people  of  the  South. 

CAN'T  RELY  ON  WHAT  is  NOW  WRITTEN. 

The  fact  is,  most  of  the  Northern,  as  well  as  some  Southern,  writers 
have  so  distorted  and  exaggerated  nearly  every  word  and  act  of  Mr. 
Lincoln's  that  it  is  impossible  to  arrive  at  the  truth  about  anything  said 
or  done  by,  or  concerning  him  or  his  career  from  their  statements.  Many 
illustrations  of  this  could  be  given,  but  owing  to  the  length  of  this  paper, 
one  or  two  must  suffice.  Perhaps  nothing  that  Mr.  Lincoln  ever  said 
or  did  has  been  so  applauded  as  his  Gettysburg  speech,  a  speech  of  about 
twenty  lines  in  length,  embodying  less  than  a  dozen  thoughts,  not  original, 
but  very  well  expressed.  Lamon  says  he  was  present  at  the  time  of  the 
delivery  of  that  speech;  that  it  fell  perfectly  flat  on  the  audience,  and 
Mr.  Everett  and  Mr.  Seward  expressed  great  disappointment  at  it.  Mr. 
Lincoln  himself  said:  "It  fell  like  a  'wet  blanket'  and  I  am  distressed 
about  it."  o  o  o  "It  is  a  flat  failure  and  the  people  are  disappointed/' 
(Lamon' s  Recollections,  171-2).  And  Lamon  then  adds: 

"In  the  face  of  these  facts,  it  has  been  repeatedly  published 
that  this  speech  was  received  by  the  audience  with  loud  demon- 


28 

strations  of  approval;  that  amid  the  tears,  sobs  and  cheers  it 
produced  on  the  excited  throng,  the  orator  of  the  day,  Mr.  Everett, 
turned  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  grasped  his  hand  and  exclaimed,  'I  con 
gratulate  you  on  your  success/  adding  in  a  transport  of  heated 
enthusiasm,  'Ah,  Mr.  President,  how  gladly  would  I  give  my  hun 
dred  pages  to  be  the  author  of  your  twenty  lines/  Nothing  of  the 
kind  occurred  (says  Lamon).  It  is  a  slander  on  Mr.  Everett,  an 
injustice  to  Mr.  Lincoln  and  a  falsification  of  history."  (Idem, 
p.  172-3.) 

Again  (and  we  would  not  refer  to  this  but  for  the  fact  that  it  is 
discussed  by  several  of  his  biographers  with  almost  shameless  freedom)  : 
The  relations  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  wife  were  notoriously  un 
pleasant.  After  he  had  fooled  her  even  when  the  day  had  been  set  for 
their  marriage  and  the  bridal  party  had  assembled,  by  failing  to  appear, 
Lamon  says :  "They  were  married,  but  they  understood  each  other,  and 
suffered  the  inevitable  consequence  as  other  people  under  similar  circum 
stances.  But  such  troubles  seldom  fail  to  find  a  tongue,  and  it  is  not 
strange  that  in  this  case  neighbors  and  friends,  and  ultimately  the  whole 
country,  came  to  know  the  state  of  things  in  that  house.  Mr.  Lincoln 
scarcely  attempted  to  conceal  it,  but  talked  of  it  with  little  or  no  reserve 
to  his  wife's  relatives  as  well  as  to  his  own  friends."  (Lamon,  474.  See 
also  3  Herndon-Weik,  429-30.)  Herndon  says:  "I  do  not  believe  he 
knew  what  happiness  was  for  twenty  years."  "Terrible"  was  the  word 
which  all  his  friends  used  to  describe  him  in  the  black  mood.  "It  was 
'terrible/  it  was  'terrible/  says  one  and  another."  (Lamon,  475 ;  1  Morse, 
65-5.) 

And  yet,  in  the  face  of  this  testimony,  one  of  his  latest  biographers 
(Noah  Brooks),  writing  for  the  series  of  "Heroes  of  the  Nations/'  says: 

"The  relations  of  Lincoln  and  his  wife  were  a  model  for  the 
married  people  of  the  republic  of  which  they  were  the  foremost 
pair."  (P.  422.) 

Verily,  as  Dr.  Lord  says: 

"Nothing  so  effectually  ends  all  jealousies,  animosities  and 
prejudices  as  the  assassin's  dagger."  (12  Beacon  Lights  of  History, 
314.) 

So  that,  re  repeat,  you  have  to  take  everything  written  or  said  about 
Mr.  Lincoln,  by  most  of  the  Northern  and  some  Southern  writers,  with 
many  grains  of  allowance,  for  there  seems  to  be  no  bounds  to  their  ex 
aggerations  and  misrepresentations.  It  is  not  out  of  place  to  add  here 
that  one  of  his  biographers,  Hapgood,  says  foreign  writers  have  written 
but  little  about  Mr.  Lincoln,  which  would  seem  to  indicate  that  they  are 
yet  waiting  to  learn  the  truth  about  him. 

We  cheerfully  admit  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  an  honest  man  in  the 
sense  that  he  was  absolutely  free  from  what  is  now  termed  "graft,"  and 


29 

that  he  never  manifested  any  disposition  to  "put  money  in  his  purse" 
which  did  not  properly  belong  there.  He  may  have  been  a  patriot,  too, 
in  the  usual  acceptation  of  that  term ;  but  as  we  diagnose  his  patriotism, 
it  was  so  intermingled  with,  and  controlled  by,  an  inordinate  personal 
ambition  it  is  impossible  to  say  how  far  that  predominted.  Certainly  his 
readiness  to  sacrifice  the  lives  and  property  both  of  his  friends  and  his 
foes  would  seem  to  show  a  recklessness  and  heartlessness  more  consistent 
with  ambition  than  with  any  characteristic  which  was  noble  and  good. 
If  he  was  a  patriot  or  a  statesman  at  all,  he  ought  certainly  to  have  known 
that  a  union  "pinned  together  with  bayonets,"  enforced  by  the  power  of 
coercion,  "against  the  consent  of  the  governed"  in  a  large  part  of  that 
union,  could  never  be  the  "Union"  as  formed  by  "our  fathers." 

"Popular  beliefs  in  time  come  to  be  superstitions,  and  create  both 
gods  and  devils,"  says  Don  Piatt,  in  speaking  of  how  little  is  now  known 
of  the  "Real  Lincoln."  (Men  Who  Saved  the  Union,  p.  28.)  And  the 
same  writer  further  says : 

"There  is  no  tyrrany  so  despotic  as  that  of  public  opinion 
among  a  free  people.  The  rule  of  the  majority  is  to  the  last 
extent  exacting  and  brutal,  and  when  brought  to  bear  on  our 
eminent  men,  it  is  also  senseless"  (Idem,  p.  27.) 

The  North  has  had  and  has  exercised  the  "rule  of  the  majority"  over 
the  South  for  nearly  half  a  century,  and  in  many  respects  that  rule  has 
truly  been  "exacting  and  brutal,"  and  especially  is  this  true  in  their 
attempts  to  make  us  fall  down  and  worship  their  false  gods.  Let  us 
never  consent  to  do  so.  No, 

"Better  the  spear,  the  blade,  the  bowl, 
Than  crucifixion  of  the  soul." 

We  are  not  vain  enough  to  think  that  what  we  have  said  to-night 
will  have  any  other  effect  than  to  inform  the  members  of  this  Camp  of 
the  true  character  and  conduct  of  this  contradictory,  strange  arid  secretive 
man,  but  we  are  vain  enough  to  think  that  you,  at  least,  will  believe  that 
what  we  have  said  to  you  we  believe  to  be  the  truth,  and  nothing  but 
the  truth.  And  we  further  believe  that  if  the  cause  espoused  by  Mr.  Lin 
coln  had  not  been  deemed  successful,  and  if  the  "assassin's  bullet"  had  not 
contributed  so  greatly  to  immortalize  him,  his  name  would  be  now 
bandied  about  as  only  that  of  an  ordinary,  coarse,  secretive,  cunning  man 
and  wily  politician,  and  one  of  the  greatest  tyrants  of  any  age. 

But  it  will  doubtless  be  replied  to  all  these  things,  that,  admitting 
their  truth,  "He  saved  the  Union,  and  the  end  was  worth  and  justified 
the  means." 

If  this  was  an  argument  at  all,  we  might  feel  the  force  of  it,  viewing 
the  matter  from  a  Northern  standpoint.  But,  in  our  opinion,  any  such 
attempted  answer  is  an  evasion,  and  "begging  the  question"  now  under 
discussion.  The  real  question  is,  not  what  was  accomplished,  but  what 
was  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  man,  and  what  were  the  methods 


30 

and  instruments  employed  by  him  to  do  his  work?  Was  the  character 
of  Abraham  Lincoln  such  as  to  make  him  an  ideal  and  exemplar  for  our 
children,  and  were  the  methods  employed  by  him  such  as  to  excite  and 
command  the  reverence,  admiration  and  emulation  of  those  who  come 
after  us?  We  answer,  No;  a  thousand  times,  No. 

REASONS  FOR  THIS  PAPER. 

But  some  will  doubtless  ask,  and  with  apparent  justification,  Is 
it  not  wrong  in  this  Camp  to  bring  forward  these  things,  especially  at 
this  time,  when  so  much  is,  ostensibly,  being  done  to  allay  sectional  feeling 
between  the  North  and  the  South  ? 

The  answer  to  all  such  inquiries  is,  to  our  mind,  perfectly  simple 
and  satisfactory.  In  the  first  place,  these  efforts  to  allay  sectional  bitter 
ness  are  far  more  apparent  than  real,  as  any  one  who  has  read  the  history 
and  current  literature  which  has  teemed  from  Northern  presses  ever  since 
the  war,  and  is  still  issuing  from  those  presses,  will  be  forced  to  admit. 
These  histories  and  this  literature,  written  almost  wholly  by  our  con 
querors,  naturally  give  their  side  of  the  conflict,  and  they  not  only  exalt 
their  leaders,  and  seek  especially  to  deify  Mr.  Lincoln,  but  they  misrep 
resent  the  cause  and  motives  of  the  Southern  people,  and  vilify  us  and  our 
leader,  Mr.  Davis,  in  the  most  flagrant  and  outrageous  way.  Mr.  Lincoln 
is  portrayed,  as  we  have  seen,  as  a  man  of  ineffable  purity,  piety  and 
patriotism,  and  his  cause  as  the  cause  of  humanity,  patriotism  and  right 
eousness,  whilst  Mr.  Davis  was  the  Arch  traitor  and  felon,  our  cause  that 
of  treason,  rebellion  and  inhumanity,  our  people  are  denominated  a  "slave 
oligarchy,"  and  their  only  reason  for  going  to  war  was  to  prolong  their 
"slave  power,"  with  no  higher  motive  than  to  save  the  money  value  of 
their  slaves.  As  an  illustration  of  the  way  our  people  have  been  misrep 
resented  and  maligned,  we  need  only  refer  to  the  fact  that  such  a  Northern 
writer  as  James  Russell  Lowell  has  preserved  in  his  most  permanent  form 
of  literature  statements  that  during  the  war  our  Southern  women  "wore 
personal  ornaments  made  of  the  bones  of  their  unburied  foes";  that  we 
wilfully  "starved  prisoners,"  "took  scalps  for  trophies,"  and  we  are  called 
"rebels"  and  "traitors,"  deserving  punishment  for  our  crimes  as  such, 
when  we  were  only  defending  our  homes  against  ruthless  invasion.  In 
a  word,  that  we  are  a  lad  people,  led  by  those  who  were  worse,  whilst 
they  are  all  good  people,  led  by  those  who  did  and  could  do  no  wrong. 
These  things  are  taught  to  our  children  by  the  literature  to  which  we 
have  referred,  and  the  effect  of  such  teaching  must  in  the  end  make  them 
deplore,  if  they  do  not  come  to  despise,  the  cause  and  conduct  of  their 
fathers. 

It  is  proper  to  say  that  there  are  some  fair-minded  and  truthful 
Northern  writers,  who,  whilst  differing  from  us  to  the  justice  of  our 
cause,  have  had  the  manliness  and  candor  to  say  that  we  were  honest 
and  patriotic  in  the  course  we  pursued,  and  these  have  written  kindly  and 
considerately  about  us,  our  cause  and  some  of  our  leaders,  and  to  all  such 
we  express  our  appreciation  and  gratitude.  But  the  great  mass  of  Northern 


31 

histories  and  literature  is  such  as  we  have  described  them,  and  especially 
is  this  true  of  the  biographies  and  literature  concerning  the  life,  the 
conduct  and  character  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  the  writers  of  these,  as  a  rule, 
apparently  seeming  to  think  they  could  only  exalt  their  subject  by  belittling 
and  belying  us,  our  cause  and  our  leaders. 

The  members  of  this  Camp  are  all  ex-Confederate  soldiers;  they 
loved  the  Confederate  cause,  and  they  love  it  still;  they  believed  it  was 
right  when  they  enlisted  in  its  defence,  and  they  believe  so  now;  they  gave 
their  young  manhood,  they  suffered,  they  made  sacrifices ;  many  of  them 
shed  their  blood,  and  have  seen  thousands  of  their  comrades  die  on  the 
field,  in  hospitals  and  in  prisons  in  defence  of  that  cause ;  they  Icnow  that 
many  of  the  things  written  about  the  cause  and  conduct  of  the  North, 
and  its  leaders,  and  especially  about  Mr.  Lincoln,  are  false.  Are  we  so 
debased  and  cowed  by  the  results  of  the  conflict  that  we  must  remain 
silent  about  these  for  the  sake  of  political  expediency  or  material  gain, 
and  not  tell  our  children  the  truth,  when  our  quondam  enemies  have  fur 
nished  us  the  evidences  of  that  truth?  If  we  do,  then,  in  our  opinion, 
we  are  unworthy  of  our  Confederate  uniforms,  and  to  have  been  the 
followers  of  Lee  and  Jackson  and  their  compeers.  If  we  remain  silent, 
can  we  expect  those  who  come  after  us  to  speak  ?  Nay,  will  they  not  rather 
interpret  our  silence  as  a  confession  of  guilt,  and  that  we  deemed 
our  cause  an  unholy  one  ?  So  that,  it  seems  to  us,  this  address  not  only 
finds  its  justification  on  the  low  plea  of  "relation  in  kind,"  but  that  its 
justification  rests  upon  the  impregnable  foundations  of  truth  and  neces 
sity,  as  well  as  that  of  a  duty  we  owe  alike  to  the  memories  of  our  dead 
comrades,  to  ourselves,  our  children  and  our  children's  children. 

"Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." 


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